From June 18th through the 20th, 2009, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary hosted this conference for clergy and laity that had as its theme “The Council and the Tomos: Twentieth-Century Landmarks Towards a Twenty-First-Century Church.”

Conference speakers focused on two watersheds that have shaped the Orthodox Church in America (OCA): the All-Russian Council (Sobor) of 1917–18 and the Tomos of Autocephaly granted in 1970 by the Russian Orthodox Church to its daughter church, the OCA, then known as the “North American Diocese.”

Conference participants likewise addressed the significance of the OCA’s presence in North America, and future paths and possibilities open to it, including its interface with the multi-jurisdictional Orthodox Christian communities in the United States and Canada.